More chronically failing Michigan schools are likely to come under the control of a CEO whose mission would be to turn around those schools — an approach that is being met with resistance among educators who say it puts too much power in the hands of one person.

The state school-reform office already is moving ahead with plans to hire a CEO to take over four elementary schools in East Detroit Public Schools, a Macomb County school district in Eastpointe that serves part of that city and part of Warren. The move was announced earlier this year.

The office is banking on the Legislature to help fund an expansion of that effort. The office has asked for $1 million to fund the district's CEO and three other similar positions. Themoney would pay for salaries, benefits and work-related expenses; $5 million more is being requested for schools with CEOs to pay for academic support, technology upgrades and professional development.

It's an approach similar to what is happening in Massachusetts, the top-performing state in the nation, where receivers with broad powers are placed in failing schools and districts. The result? In the district that has been under receivership the longest — Lawrence Public Schools, under a receiver since 2011 — graduation rates are up and test scores are climbing, said Mitchell Chester, commissioner of elementary and secondary education.

In Michigan, the CEO model is part of a more aggressive approach by the school-reform office since last year, when Gov. Rick Snyder pulled it from the Michigan Department of Education, where it had sat since being formed in 2010, to the state Department of Technology, Management and Budget. At the time, Snyder said he wanted the school-reform office to do more to help "priority schools," which rank among the bottom 5% academically.

The state first began identifying the bottom 5% in 2010. Currently, there are 184 priority schools. That list includes schools with improved rankings, but state law requires them to be identified as priority schools for at least four years.

The mission of the office is to turn failures into successes, said Natasha Baker, the state school reform officer.

"We aren't just about getting schools off the list," Baker said. "We want schools in the bottom 5% to be in the top 25%."

The office is providing services such as customized assistance to schools based on their needs and requiring priority schools to submit comprehensive data every six to eight weeks; the data is used to make mid-course fixes rather than waiting until students take state exams.

State law requires the office to intervene with those priority schools and gives it broad powers in turning around those schools. But though the office has been around since 2010, it had not, until the move, taken advantage of most of those powers, which include the placement of a CEO and closure of schools.

The CEO approach, Baker said, will help schools that have been on the priority list for years but have shown little or no improvement, and where data suggests the current interventions aren't working.

She has been pushing the plan before lawmakers as they craft a budget for the next fiscal year. If the request for more money is rejected, it would jeopardize the office's efforts, Baker said.

But the plans for expansion already have educators nervous, wondering whose school the office will target next.

"There's that looking over your shoulder," said Judy Pritchett, chief academic officer for the Macomb Intermediate School District.

Educators express doubts

Robert Floden, dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University, said it remains to be seen whether such an approach would be successful in turning around schools in Michigan.

"It's no silver bullet. It depends on the person and it depends on the things they're going to do and their ability to mobilize and motivate the staff," Floden said. "Ultimately, it's the teachers that are going to make it better."

Randy LIepa, superintendent of the Wayne Regional Educational Service Agency, said districts with priority schools "are looking for anything that will help them improve student achievement." But he's not convinced that the CEO approach is the way to go.

"The intermediate school districts have been willing to step up to provide support for schools. ... That would seem to be much more of a logical approach," said Liepa, whose agency is the intermediate school district for Wayne County.

Others see too many similarities to the state's emergency management law, which has put state-appointed emergency managers in financially distressed school districts and municipalities. The law has been blamed for burgeoning deficits in the Detroit Public Schools district.

The CEO would control how the school's funding is spent, could terminate any contract or portion of a contract and impose a plan for changes on the school, among other things.

"To us, this isn't any different than an emergency manager," Pritchett said. "And we know that the emergency manager model has not been successful."

Casandra Ulbrich, vice president of the State Board of Education, described the CEO approach as "emergency management on steroids" at the March meeting of the state board.

"There's not much of a limit of what they could potentially do with these schools — all without any involvement of the taxpayers and the citizens who actually fund those school and support them," she said.

At the meeting, Baker said the office plans to take full advantage of the law.

"However, under my leadership, it is my intent to ensure that we hire an academic expert who behaves and makes the types of decisions that are in the best interests of the children."

She said the office intends to work closely with the superintendent and school boards in districts where a CEO is appointed.

What happened elsewhere

Baker took her team to Massachusetts for several days in December where officials learned about the state's process of placing schools in receivership.

In Massachusetts, the receiver has what Chester, the commissioner, described as "the full authority that would have been given to the superintendent of the district, as well as the elected school committee."

The receiver can require staff members to reapply for their jobs and can amend or suspend parts of collective bargaining agreements that Chester called impediments to implementing a turnaround plan.

"Certainly, not everybody thought it was a good idea," Chester said.

And that's still the case. State teachers unions have filed suit against the state over receivership.

Common to the receiver schools and districts: A longer school year for students and even more additional days for teachers for professional development, teacher meetings and planning. No longer are there automatic raises; instead, compensation is based on performance. More decision-making is given to school faculty.

The State School Reform Office likely will announce soon that it is closing two schools.

State law identifies closure as an option the office can choose in dealing with schools that wind up on a list that includes schools that rank in the bottom 5% academically. But the office has never taken advantage of that power.

Natasha Baker, the state school reform officer, said a formal announcement is forthcoming. The two include one charter school and one traditional public school.

“These are not closures based on anything other than the fact that the vast majority of the kids are not proficient,” Baker said last week. “There are high schools in and outside of Detroit, on both sides of the state, that have not one kid proficient in certain content areas. That is criminal … and it sets kids up for failure as adults.”

What the CEO can do

CEOs hired to take on chronically low-performing schools will have a range of responsibilities. Here are a few of them outlined in the application for the CEO job in Macomb County's East Detroit Public Schools district:

• Evaluating the conditions of the schools and identifying areas that need to be changed, strengthened or restructured

• Building collaborative relationships with relevant stakeholders, including constituencies within all levels of state, intermediate school district and public school district administration; principals; teachers; education service providers; community partners, and parents